This review may contain spoilers
Royal emptyness
It doesn't feel like the writers wanted to write a time travel tale as the time travel aspects are what they're least interested in, yet they are unable to make the parts outside of it well either with weak if any cohesive emotional connections for the characters and the people in their lives..
Seori doesn't make any sense at all, she acted like a regular person when she was a court lady, but becomes a loud over the top cartoon no matter which time period she was in. The the reveal that she swapped places with her historical counterpart when she was 12 makes everything even more nonsensical about her character. That age is too old for her not to remember she time traveled. How did she get all the fighting, medicine, skills, and that cartoon personality between the grand prince dying and she marrying up? Nothing explained. It's not explained how she finally figured out that jealous fellow extra has been harassing her boarding lodgings too.
Se Gye's awful toxic masculinity traits of being an angry jealous controlling rich guy prone to bouts of anger so much that the fake videos of him destroying things and being awful to people is not off base at all is portrayed as cute and comical, but it's just majorly off putting. Mun Do plays the devious villain very well without being over the top, he makes the main characters look bad. Not that those actors are bad at acting, but the writing for them is subpar compared to the writing for the villain guy.
They just barely mention the interesting concept of the original Dan Shin who lived in the modern time. Did people dismiss this little 12 year old actress talking like she's from the ancient times just prepping for a some drama? They don't have the two women talk or ever mean anything to each other. They had this gold mine to explore it was barely even in the background. There's no internal rules, logic, or stakes to anything regarding the time travel as well, just changing arbitrarily as the writers need to get to the next point. The show has awful costume designs for all of the modern clothes too.
Seori doesn't make any sense at all, she acted like a regular person when she was a court lady, but becomes a loud over the top cartoon no matter which time period she was in. The the reveal that she swapped places with her historical counterpart when she was 12 makes everything even more nonsensical about her character. That age is too old for her not to remember she time traveled. How did she get all the fighting, medicine, skills, and that cartoon personality between the grand prince dying and she marrying up? Nothing explained. It's not explained how she finally figured out that jealous fellow extra has been harassing her boarding lodgings too.
Se Gye's awful toxic masculinity traits of being an angry jealous controlling rich guy prone to bouts of anger so much that the fake videos of him destroying things and being awful to people is not off base at all is portrayed as cute and comical, but it's just majorly off putting. Mun Do plays the devious villain very well without being over the top, he makes the main characters look bad. Not that those actors are bad at acting, but the writing for them is subpar compared to the writing for the villain guy.
They just barely mention the interesting concept of the original Dan Shin who lived in the modern time. Did people dismiss this little 12 year old actress talking like she's from the ancient times just prepping for a some drama? They don't have the two women talk or ever mean anything to each other. They had this gold mine to explore it was barely even in the background. There's no internal rules, logic, or stakes to anything regarding the time travel as well, just changing arbitrarily as the writers need to get to the next point. The show has awful costume designs for all of the modern clothes too.
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